The archive was compiled and donated (well, loaned) by an investment advisor(Julio Mario Santo Domingo), whose interests “centered on sex, drugs, and rock and roll.” In addition to the 50k+ print and audiovisual materials held by Harvard’s libraries, Santo Domingo also “formed a major Rock and Roll Collection (now at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland)” and owned “the world’s largest collection of opium pipes.”

Appropriately, “[t]he Santo Domingo Collection is not physically together in one location,” but rather distributed across the university and the virtual world because it just can’t be contained, man. (Happily, that also means that Harvard’s diligent librarians have scanned many items and made them publicly accessible – so the collection is a great online resource if you’re looking for 19th-century works on opium, say).